Any missteps will be seized upon by Republicans who are targeting the VP relentlessly as part of a long-term strategy to weaken a potential future Democratic presidential nominee. Immigration is an issue ripe for demagoguery, as exemplified by ex-President Donald Trump. The Biden Administration offered the GOP an opening after it was caught flat-footed on a surge of child migrants earlier this year. Harris aides — trying to avoid a damaging political banana skin — have repeatedly stressed her mandate is international and does not encompass border issues.
For much of the last four months, Harris has been literally in Biden’s wake — standing behind him in almost every formal public appearance as he sends a message of a unified team and enhances her status as his first lieutenant. The President has also given his unspoken successor another tough job, organizing the Democratic fight against a raft of Republican attempts to restrict voting in upcoming elections.
Neither the immigration nor the voting rights assignments offer much promise for success. But they are an opportunity for Harris to create her own White House legacy — and will test her skills and qualifications for the one executive office higher than the one she already holds.
‘They’ve always looked at us like their backyard. That’s the mistake’
Giammattei also suggested that the US needed to change its perspective on countries in Central America. “There is a mistake being made in the United States. They’ve always looked at us like their backyard. That’s the mistake. We’re the front yard. And if the front yard is bad, how will the house be? You don’t take care of your front yard, how will your house be?”
‘I’m not the one trying to undermine American democracy’
“I’m not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I’m the one that’s trying to save it,” Trump said in a speech in North Carolina on Saturday. Classic Trump, creating a new and false reality in which his millions of supporters can live.
The former president has been whitewashing his own culpability in the deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, and is also endorsing scores of efforts by Republican state legislators to erect an infrastructure that could be used to steal future elections. Now, with his endorsement of North Carolina Senate candidate Ted Budd at Saturday’s event, Trump is making an embrace of his flagrant lies a ticket to entry for future Republican races.
It’s not just on the election that Trump is moving to cover up the damage dealt by his presidency. As he plots a comeback, he is leading fellow Republicans and conservative talking heads in an assault on the nation’s chief medical officer Anthony Fauci. Conspiracy theories are rife that Fauci covered up or was even involved in China’s developing of the Covid-19 virus. US intelligence is looking at the origins of the virus. But the fact there’s no evidence to prove wild claims about Fauci is immaterial; baseless speculation helps Trump deflect attention from his own pandemic denialism and the ensuing deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The idea that Trump is trying to save democracy is laughable. He shattered the barrier of independence between the Justice Department and the White House. He was impeached twice: once for trying to get Ukraine to interfere in an election and again for inciting a mob attack on Congress. He has convinced tens of millions of Americans that the 2020 election was a scam. And he ordered Republican leaders in Washington to scupper an independent probe into the January insurrection.
Far from saving US democracy, Trump is driving it closer to destruction.
‘Our founders were wise to see the temptation of absolute power’
“What I’ve seen during my time in Washington is that every party in power will always want to exercise absolute power, absolutely. Our founders were wise to see the temptation of absolute power and built in specific checks and balances to force compromise that serves to preserve our fragile democracy. The Senate, its processes and rules, have evolved over time to make absolute power difficult while still delivering solutions to the issues facing our country and I believe that’s the Senate’s best quality.”
